Top 10 Books to Read in the New Year
New Year reading lists usually chase novelty. The better ones chase momentum. As of December 31, 2025, the strongest “start here” books tend to do one of two things: they pull you into a world so fast you stop checking your phone, or they give you language for the year ahead—work, health, money, technology, politics, and what it’s doing to people.
The tension is that “best of the year” books are not always the best first books. Some are brilliant but heavy. Some are smart but slow. A New Year list has to do both jobs: quality and lift.
This guide picks ten titles that have been widely recognised across 2025 year-end selections and major prize conversations, plus a small number of forward-looking 2026 releases are already being positioned as big reads for the year ahead. It mixes fiction and nonfiction, avoids niche dependency, and leans towards books that travel well in the mind—clear stakes, strong sentences, and ideas you can carry into January.
By the end, readers will have a balanced stack: two-page-turners, a few serious “big brain” books, and several that quietly change how you see ordinary life.
The narrative hinges on whether you shape the upcoming year intentionally or by accident.
Key Points
This top 10 focuses on books that combine quality with early-year readability: strong openings, clear stakes, and high “keep going” energy.
The list balances fiction and nonfiction so the reading habit doesn’t collapse under one emotional tone.
Several picks have been major award standouts or consistent year-end choices, which tends to filter out hype.
A few selections look ahead to 2026 releases already being framed as defining reads for readers who want to be early.
The list is designed to create a “reading flywheel”: one book leads cleanly into the next without burnout.
The aim is not to cover every genre but to build a stack that sustains a whole quarter.
Background
Reading in January is not the same as reading in July. In early-year weeks, people are rebuilding routines: sleep, training, budgeting, work rhythms, and a quieter social calendar. Books that thrive in this window usually share a trait: they help a person move.
That movement can be narrative—characters in trouble, a mystery, a relationship under strain. Or it can be intellectual—an idea that reorganises the way the world looks. The best “New Year books” do both. They entertain while also sharpening the reader’s sense of what matters.
This list uses two filters. First, it prioritises titles that have stood out in 2025’s broader discussion about books because that conversation is a rough proxy for durability. Second, it asks a more practical question: if someone starts this on January 1, will they still be reading on January 15?
The List
1) Flesh — David Szalay
This is a lean, unsentimental novel that tracks a man’s life through moments that feel both ordinary and quietly catastrophic. It reads fast because the prose wastes nothing, and it sticks because it understands how power and class shape the body as much as the mind. It is a strong January choice because it is adult, sharp, and surprisingly propulsive.
2) The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny — Kiran Desai
A long-anticipated novel that delivers the pleasure of a big, lived-in story. It moves between intimacy and wider social pressure, the personal and the political, without flattening either. This is the kind of book that reminds readers why fiction can hold more truth than an argument.
3) The Story of a Heart — Rachel Clarke
A deeply humane work that turns medicine into story without losing precision. It is about systems, choices, and the fragile line between tragedy and gift. In January, when many people reset their health goals, this book does something better than motivation: it brings clarity and gratitude without sentimentality.
4) The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years — Sunil Amrith
If you want one serious nonfiction read that reorganises your understanding of the modern world, make it this: It treats environmental change as history, not as a side topic, and it connects decisions across centuries to the crises people now experience as “sudden.” It is not a panic book. It is a pattern book.
5) Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin— Sue Prideaux
A biography that uses one life to explore art, ego, colonialism, and mythmaking. It is readable, vivid, and full of moral tension without turning into a courtroom. It suits the New Year because it is energising: it makes people want to visit galleries, travel, and argue about what art is allowed to be.
6) How to End a Story: Collected Diaries — Helen Garner
This book is for readers who value both craft and honesty. Diaries are not “content.” They are a record of a mind wrestling with life while it happens. This collection is useful in a subtle way: it trains attention. It also makes writing feel possible again, which is exactly what many people want at the start of a year.
7) The Director—a standout 2025 novel in the spy-and-power lane
Some of the best January reading is a taut novel that feels like it knows how the world works: institutions, ambition, secrecy, and the costs of competence. This is one of those books. It has the drive of a thriller but the weight of literature, which makes it a reliable “finish it” pick.
8) 1929—Andrew Ross Sorkin.
A hard reset book for readers thinking about markets, risk, and the stories societies tell about boom and bust. It is not just history. It is a lesson in incentives, confidence, and contagion—how fear and greed move through institutions. In a year when people think about personal finance with more seriousness, it gives context without preaching.
9) A major 2026 AI biography to watch— Sebastian Mallaby on Demis Hassabis
If 2025 was the year AI became unavoidable in daily conversation, 2026 looks like a year where people will demand to understand who built the core systems and how they think. A well-reported biography can cut through myth. This pick is for readers who want to understand the maker mindset behind modern AI and how it shaped the current moment.
10) A major 2026 fiction release from a top-tier novelist—one of the year’s early headline novels.
Every New Year stack benefits from a “big novel on the horizon”. It gives readers something to anticipate and helps sustain the habit beyond January. Several major literary figures have prominent 2026 releases lined up. The best way to reward yourself after reading is to pick one and pre-order or queue it.
Why?
The people most affected by the quality of a reading year are not “book people.” They are everyone trying to hold attention in a distracted environment: students, managers, parents, founders, researchers, and anyone working in a job where clear thinking is currency.
In the short term, finishing even two books in January can change the shape of the year. It improves focus, reduces passive consumption, and makes the mind more resilient to noise. In the long term, a reading habit compounds. It deepens knowledge, improves writing and speech, and strengthens judgement under pressure.
The next events to watch are the early-year release calendars and prize longlists as they appear through the first half of 2026, because they tend to steer the public conversation about what is “worth” reading.
Impact
A product manager in Seattle wants to reclaim attention. They start with a propulsive novel, then alternate fiction and nonfiction. By week three, they have replaced late-night scrolling with thirty minutes of reading and sleep improves.
A nurse in London wants a book that feels meaningful without being bleak. They choose a medical narrative that respects complexity and finish it in four sittings, then share it with colleagues. It becomes a quiet morale boost.
A small-business owner in Manchester wants to understand risk better after a volatile year. The small-business owner reads the financial history and begins to spot patterns in headlines such as leverage, confidence cycles, and fragile trust. Their planning becomes calmer and more structured.
A graduate student in Toronto feels overwhelmed by “AI everything”. They read an accessible, reported account of how the technology was built and stop treating the topic as magic. They become more confident asking better questions at work and in seminars.
The value of a New Year's reading list is not its ranking. It is a habit that makes it possible. Whether reading becomes another abandoned resolution or a small daily ritual that quietly compounds into knowledge, calmness, and sharper judgement is a crucial decision.
The sign to watch is simple: by mid-January, are people still reading without forcing it? If yes, the flywheel is spinning. If not, the list was too heavy, too worthy, or too abstract.
The story is still the same at the end of December: attention is the scarce resource. Books are one of the few tools that reliably return it.
